Diplomatic Briefing
Your exclusive news aggregator handpicked daily!Archive for November 11, 2022
Newsline: UK embassy worker in Berlin pleads guilty to Russia spying charges
A British man who worked in the UK embassy in Berlin has pleaded guilty to eight offences under the Official Secrets Act related to passing on information useful to Russia. David Ballantyne Smith, who was living in Potsdam, Germany and was employed as a security guard at the embassy, was extradited to Britain from Germany following his arrest by German police in August 2021. The 58-year-old pleaded guilty to eight offences on Nov. 4. Judge Mark Wall lifted restrictions on reporting Smith’s pleas on Friday after the prosecution indicated it will not seek a trial on a ninth charge to which Smith pleaded not guilty. Smith appeared at the Old Bailey in London last week and pleaded guilty to one charge of passing information about British civil servants to General Major Sergey Chukhurov, described in the prosecution indictment as the Russian military attaché to Berlin, between October and December 2020. He also admitted seven other charges relating to collecting information which might be “useful to an enemy, namely the Russian state”, including material “relating to the operation and layout of the British embassy in Berlin”. (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/1-british-worker-uk-embassy-160708782.html) A hearing is expected to take place in February 2023 to determine the basis on which Smith will be sentenced.
Newsline: Top level diplomacy between U.S. and China expected at G20 summit next week
President Joe Biden will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of next week’s Group of 20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, the White House announced. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement that the two leaders will meet Monday to discuss “efforts to maintain and deepen lines of communication between the United States and the PRC, responsibly manage competition, and work together where our interests align, especially on transnational challenges that affect the international community.” (https://news.yahoo.com/biden-meet-chinas-xi-person-180026286.html) The meeting comes as the relationship between the United States and China has grown increasingly strained over the past few years. Tensions hit a high over the summer after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, which Beijing viewed as an effort to undermine China’s territorial integrity. Although the two leaders have spoken virtually five times over the past two years, this will be their first in-person meeting since Biden became president. Xi did not attend last year’s G-20 summit in Rome and has just recently begun traveling overseas since the start of the Covid pandemic.
Newsline: Top U.S. General Urges Diplomacy in Ukraine
A disagreement has emerged at the highest levels of the United States government over whether to press Ukraine to seek a diplomatic end to its war with Russia, with America’s top general urging negotiations while other advisers to President Joe Biden argue that it is too soon. Gen. Mark Milley, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has made the case in internal meetings that the Ukrainians have achieved about as much as they could reasonably expect on the battlefield before winter sets in and so they should try to cement their gains at the bargaining table, according to officials informed about the discussions. The debate, which the officials described on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss sensitive deliberations, has spilled out into public in recent days as Milley made public comments hinting at his private advice. “Seize the moment,” he said in a speech in New York on Wednesday. He elaborated in an interview on CNBC on Thursday. “We’ve seen the Ukrainian military fight the Russian military to a standstill,” he said. “Now, what the future holds is not known with any degree of certainty, but we think there are some possibilities here for some diplomatic solutions.” (https://news.yahoo.com/top-u-general-urges-diplomacy-131116974.html) But other senior officials have resisted the idea, maintaining that neither side is ready to negotiate and that any pause in the fighting would only give President Vladimir Putin of Russia a chance to regroup. While Biden’s advisers believe the war will likely be settled through negotiations eventually, officials said, they have concluded that the moment is not ripe and the United States should not be seen as pressuring the Ukrainians to hold back while they have momentum.
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